Difficult Computer Issue

[sidevinders]

Right, i think this issue is gonna be hard to solve but i'd love someone to prove me wrong...

This morning PC appeared to be fine.
Told it to do a defragment (not done one for about 6 months) and then went to uni.
Came back about 6 hours later and it had finished the defrag but then......computer siezed up.

I restarted it but now it boots veeeeeeeeery slooooooowly - circa 10 minutes (about 1 min previously). Whereas before the harddrive could be heard to be chundering away it now appears to stutter. Though it eventually gets there.
I noticed the case fan was not working (processor and power supply fans seperate and fine) so i put in a new one which works now.

Once XP has loaded it seems ok.

Why does it boot so slooooowly?

[doug phillips]

Did you power it down, and leave it to cool down ? I would let it cool down for a good hour, and try again.

Sorry I cannot offer any better advice.

[sidevinders]

I lied....it randomly slows down whilst doing various things.....eg opening browser windows.

And system restore wont work.

[sidevinders]

I left it powered off for about 30 mins while i went and bought a new fan.

[ThePassenger]

Could have buggered it's boot cache... do a google for clearing the pre-cache on XP, I think BlairOut has posted destructions here so a search might yeild results.

Queue up a chkdsk + harddrive check and reboot... see if it finds anything.

[BliarOut]

Just delete everything in the c:\Windows\Prefetch directory to reset the cache.

[fuzzymonkey]

Almost certainly its the hard disk. Start backing up your data!

[SneakyNeil]

fuzzymonkey said:

Almost certainly its the hard disk. Start backing up your data!

then do a chkdsk c: /f /r

[sidevinders]

Yeah, thats what i figured.....windows restore says "the windows partition is too corrupted to perform this task"

so im gonna back up and format some time tomorrow I think.

Ta.

[SneakyNeil]

sidevinders said:

format

May I interject breifly to say that IMO you're jumping the gun a bit there, as chkdsk usually fixes this kind of stuff.

[BliarOut]

SneakyNeil said:

sidevinders said:

format

May I interject breifly to say that IMO you're jumping the gun a bit there, as chkdsk usually fixes this kind of stuff.

Too early in the day for a format based on what's been said.

[nickfrp]

sidevinders said:

Yeah, thats what i figured.....windows restore says "the windows partition is too corrupted to perform this task"

so im gonna back up and format some time tomorrow I think.

Ta.

maybe think about replacing the harddisk. if the harddisk went tits up while donig defrag id consider replacing it before you format it infear that it could go again and you may not have the chance to back it up

that if you have important stuff on there.

my harddrive was starting to piss about so i bought a new one and used my old one as a slave holding just crap i dont mind loosing. 2 months later died.,.. but i everything i needed was fine

[sidevinders]

ok the formats on hold for a bit... ran the dskchk got loads of these..."file record segment xxxxxx is unreadable"
am investigating further...

Edited by sidevinders on Tuesday 27th February 12:54

[arfur]

Back up and by a new hd ... it's on the way out.

It could just be 'stickyness' though and the easiest solution to the is to band the HD on the edge of a desk a couple of times both sides ... And no .. I'm really not joking ! I've recovered supposed 'failed' disks like this for clients and friends in the past ..

Just back the thing up first !!

[-DeaDLocK-]

Back up NOW.

Sounds like it's on its way out. And if it is, formatting won't help either.

[Scraggles]

had the same thing, u can try and do lots of read writes and lose the lot, or simply buy a new and bigger hard drive and replace it, when u get sector errors and windoze tells u it cant fix it..... subtle hint

[ThePassenger]

sidevinders said:

ok the formats on hold for a bit... ran the dskchk got loads of these..."file record segment xxxxxx is unreadable"
am investigating further...

Edited by sidevinders on Tuesday 27th February 12:54

Let me join the quorum by saying:

Get a new drive NOW or it will all end in tears.